The social atmosphere on Siberut Island was very much geared toward evening gatherings. It took me a while get used to it, since even before the web-wired “information age” I grew up surrounded by popular culture like TV – and Amantiru’s place didn’t even have a radio. Indeed, the songs Amantiru and his friends sang…
After the teacher asked if anyone had a sacred place and the students fidgeted and shrank in their chairs, the most serious of them all said it was his car, being in it alone, his tape deck playing things he’d chosen, and others knew the truth had been spoken and began speaking about their rooms,…
My trekking guide, Agus, told me the story of some Dutch journalists who wanted to visit an “authentic” Siberut Island village, and were disappointed that the Mentawai they saw within a day of the Baderaeket River used plastic cups and ate processed sugar. Insisting that Agus take them deeper into the jungle for a purer…
Amantiru, my Mentawai host on Siberut Island, processed sago flour using a technique not dissimilar to traditional wine-makers’ ritual of stomping grapes. He jokingly called it “dancing without music.” Whereas the world’s most iconic staple foods are rice (commonly associated with Asia), wheat (Europe and the Middle East), and maize (the Americas), the Mentawai diet…
One of the more startling features of Mentawai houses are the animal skulls that hang over the lintel of each family home. Some of these bones once belonged to wild pigs, others to flying foxes. Most unnerving to behold are the bones of “simpai,” the black-and-yellow primate endemic to the islands, which yield faintly human-like…
I suppose I’ve always known that there are men in isolated parts of the word who dress in bark-fiber loincloths and lace their arms and legs in animist tattoos, but it was a tad strange to meet one in person. During the days I stayed at Amantiru’s longhouse a part of me kept waiting for…
1) On the way trails have made us what we are Trails can be found in virtually every part of this vast, strange, mercurial, partly tamed, but still shockingly wild world of ours. Throughout the history of life on Earth, we have created pathways to guide our journeys, transmit messages, refine chaos, and preserve wisdom.…
The Baderaeket River is the first step in reaching the Mentawai tribal villages on the Siberut Island. “Baderaeket” means “One Way” – and the river has this name because it’s the only way to get into the rainforest on this part of the island. After traveling 20 miles up the Baderaeket River by boat with…
I am by nature an introvert – and this instinct can really kick in when I’m around people who don’t speak English. Usually, in a place like Asia, someone will come over and try to strike up a conversation, but these women did not. At least, not at first. I took this picture not long…
Travel has a way of making you imagine yourself living alternate existences. Sometimes these daydreams are the result of genuine cross-cultural empathy. Just as often, however, they are pure fantasy. I saw this little island on the high-speed ferry to the Mentawai Archipelago from the Sumatran mainland. It seemed perfect somehow, with its white-sand beach,…
When we recount our travels to other people, it is common and understandable to leave out those throwaway afternoons when a simple task goes awry in a banal way. Misadventures, of course – those spectacular and at times melodramatic failures of the expected – are the bread-and-butter of travel writing. But it’s less common to…
